Holocaust survivor moves congregation with past

Reading stories of the Holocaust in history books is not the same as hearing the story from a survivor.

On May 2, the congregation at Temple Beth Torah heard first-hand how the Holocaust devastated the Jewish community from Leon Cooper, a survivor.

“From 1939 to 1945 more than six million people were killed, murdered and their crime was being Jewish,” he said.

As the congregation listened in silence, they relived the past through the survivor’s speech.

“It was a touching, emotional and educational speech. It was nice to draw the community together,” said Bart Myers, president of the Temple Beth Torah congregation.

According to Paula Garrett, an Atascocita resident, she also felt it was an emotional speech.

“Like our spiritual leader said, there so much that he did not speak of because of the horrible nature of it. I appreciate what he went through and sharing it with us and our children,” she said. “Very soon, we will no longer have Holocaust survivors to share their story.”

As a former president of a Temple, Spring resident Alan Solovay felt the pain of the Holocaust.

“Not being in the same generation as Cooper, I was still able to feel the grief and pain that he went through,” he said. “It was very difficult to hold back tears because I felt the grief. I think everyone was very moved.”

Cooper was born in Poland and at the young age of 15, he and his family found themselves in the middle of horrible situation, the Holocaust.

“My parents sent us to live with relatives 40 minutes away. They later joined us and we began our lives as a refugees,” Cooper said.

When the Germans invaded Poland, Cooper and his family were taken along with other Jews to work or extermination camps. He worked for many years in work camps in Poland and Germany. One of the camps he worked in was overseen by Oskar Schindler, who tried to protect Jews working in his factory. The story was the basis for a 1993 film by Steven Spielberg.

“When ‘Schindler’s List’ came out I spoke two or three times a week for a year,” Cooper said before the temple services.

As part of a program for the Holocaust Museum in Houston, Cooper and other survivors often spoke at schools in the Houston area. But in last few years, more teachers are brining students to the museum to learn about the tragedy.

Some of the survivors he’s met in Houston were in some of the same camps as he was. But Cooper said it’s difficult to find those he worked beside while in the camps.

“It’s not that you didn’t want to make friends,” Cooper said. “You really were busy working or trying to get food. There was no recreation, no time to talk, no television, no radio. You just work and go to sleep and work and go to sleep.”

Many people didn’t make it, including Cooper’s family. Millions were worked to death, executed to make room for new arrivals or simply killed for no reason at all. Cooper’s father was with a group of 50 men who were shot when one of those men was discovered with bread. In one of the work camps, Cooper saw a German officer who was walking his dogs, set the dogs to attack a man working next to him. Cooper’s mother and sisters never made it to the work camps; they went straight to an extermination camp.

Cooper is not sure why he survived.

“It’s not really what we did or didn’t do to go ahead and survive,” he said. “I was no big guy. I was in my teens. I survived. People in their 20s, full grown men, died like flies.”

Speaking about what happened to him, is not an easy task, Cooper said. Nor is it for any survivor. He tries to think of what happened to him as if it happened to someone else. He’s seen other survivors break down in the middle of their stories, unable to continue. But it’s an important story to tell, he said.

“We were telling each other someone’s got to survive,” Cooper recalled. “If anyone survived we’ve got to tell people what happened. We thought no one would believe it.”